The first day of January brings with it a few guarantees, guarantees so sure that they’re on par with the sun rising in the east and setting in the west: a well-lit ball descending minutes prior to midnight in Times Square, the Rose Bowl being played in Pasadena, California, and millions of citizens the world over spending the first week of the year re-writing dates on their checks books and letter head.

One other guarantee is the New Year’s resolution: the long-held New Year ritual where people “resolve” to become better at something they’ve struggled with over the past year. But just as surely as these resolutions will be made, it’s a virtual lock that they will be broken.

Of course, there are exceptions to every rule; some people succeed with their New Year’s promises. But by and large, New Year’s resolutions are seldom kept once they’re made. It’s a sad but oh-so-true fact that several studies corroborate.

One such study was done by researchers from several institutions of higher knowledge in New York (Columbia University, Syracuse University and John Hopkins University), finding that two-thirds of “resolutioners” eventually broke their resolutions. And if you thought that was high, consider the study done in Britain. In the British-based study, lead researcher Richard Wiseman of the University of Hertfordshire tracked the success rate of 1,800 “resolutioners” in Britain and another 1,200 in America. At the end of the day – or should I say at the end of the study – a whopping 88 percent of “resolutioners” copped out. As the Washington Times put it, that means that in a group of 100 people, only 12 of them held true to their resolution convictions.

Wiseman says that the reasons for the failures depended on the gender, but I have a more basic reason for their failures: they weren’t committed to their resolution in the first place.

I’m not a fan of New Year’s resolutions. As I’ve made clear, they’re all too often broken and are viewed as the ONE AND ONLY DAY in which life-altering behaviors are considered.

That’s where the problem lies – New Year’s resolutions are all talk, no walk. They’re too often considered, and not implemented.

And this is why I hereby declare we as a people “resolve to dissolve” New Year’s resolution. Instead of talking about implementing changes in the New Year – start right now! Don’t wait another moment or believe that since you didn’t get something done this year, you’ll try again next year. If you missed a workout or two last week, make the necessary changes NOW so that you won’t miss them this week. If you had a moment of weakness and gave in to a cigarette, make the change NOW to get rid of that carton of cigarettes so the temptation won’t arise again.

Any fundamental change that will better one’s life has to come from within, a firm commitment – a sense of duty, if you will – to improve one’s situation, where no amount of failure will deter that commitment.

New Year’s resolutions are almost set up for failure. They ought to be eliminated from our every day lexicon and replaced with “New Day’s resolution” – where we resolve TODAY to make changes in our lives and resolve to stick by those changes…despite the missteps taken along the way.